Continuing his crusade against unscrupulous debt collectors, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo last week filed suit against the Benning-Smith Group, seeking to shut down the Buffalo-based operation.
According to the Attorney General’s press release, the Benning-Smith Group ran “at least 13 debt collection companies that operated out of multiple locations and under various assumed names in Western New York. The company names include:
Abrams, Burke & Associates
- Benning and Smith Acquisitions, Inc.
- Brady and Caruso, LLC
- DebtPayments.com
- DebtPayments.com, LLC
- Fredericks, Goldstein & Zoe
- Graham, Noble & Associates Bookkeeping
- Graham, Noble & Associates LLC
- Graham, Beagle & Associates LLC
- Kingman, Cole and Associates, LCC
- Marshall and Ziolkowski Enterprise, LLC
- Marshall Ziolkowski Acquisitions, LLC
- Lansky, Goldstein, Zoe
- OLS Payment Services
- University Debt Collection
The press release said, in part:
According to the more than 850 consumer complaints filed with the Office of the Attorney General, the Federal Trade Commission and the Better Business Bureau, the Benning-Smith Group’s employees violated state and federal law by routinely posing as law enforcement officials and threatening to arrest or to physically harm consumers unless they made arrangements to pay the company immediately. Additionally, the Benning-Smith Group made abuse and humiliation a trademark of their collection practices by verbally abusing consumers and, in some instances, sexually harassing them. To date, the Attorney General’s investigation has identified more than a thousand instances in which the Benning-Smith Group breached state and federal statutes.
At news conferences last week, CNN reports, Cuomo introduced two victims of the Benning-Smith Group. The debt collectors threatened the victims with immediate arrest and verbally abused them over the phone.
